The power of persistence

I’ve been playing in the women’s squash league at my gym for almost two years now. I lost every game the first season. All but two games the second season. I won most of them by this time last year, and then, depressingly, I moved up a level. And I’ve pretty much done nothing but lose ever since. That’s about 20 games of losing since January, people. Well, I’ve actually lost a LOT more games than that, but that’s about 20 league games of losing since January.

I didn’t play in the summer this year, because I found that most of the league games I played were, well, not fun. The players are so intense. They’re so mad when they don’t win every single point. They have no humour in their playing. I was going to stop playing in the league in its entirety, but the coordinator begged me to play when I tried to back out. So I signed up again this fall.

Tonight, I was moaning on Facebook about how I didn’t want to play because I knew I was going to get shellacked. I’m definitively the worst player in this level. And that’s okay. I’m really very okay with sucking. Because I’m there to have fun, and to get better, so I totally ask every player for advice on what I could have done better or differently so that I could have won the point.

But, I made a commitment to play, and someone was going to be there waiting for me, so I shlepped my butt to the gym. And man, was that ever a great move on my part.

No, I totally didn’t win. In fact, I could only have been more shellacked if I were a badly restored piece of Victorian furniture. But it was so fun! I’ve never played this woman before and she was awesome. Great sense of humour. Total sound effects. Full participation squash playing. Excellent tips. And, she even switched racquets with me. Yeah. When you pay more than $40 for a racquet, it’s a LOT lighter than the cheapest one on the wall at sports experts.

Man, I loved playing this woman. She. Was. Great. I feel so much brighter and happier now that I’ve hit things (legally) for 40 minutes, including some dazzlingly awesome serves and returns, and had a bunch of laughs. Seriously? Awesome.